October writing links

Hello, reader. Here’s a little tidbit for you: I’m a mad documenter of the past. This, no doubt, has something to do with having two historians for parents. I grew up knowing words like “archive” at a very young age. Anyway, I’m always trying to preserve moments in time. For example, October.

I thought I’d share the writing-related links* from October that most moved, inspired, thrilled, saddened, and in the case of two book reviews, surprised me. In other words, worth reading:

Alexander Chee‘s wonderful essay on Annie Dillard and the Writing Life.

An excellent question posed on Practicing Writing. I could probably write a blog post about my experience with age in my MFA program. Oh wait, I did. All I can say is, if you’re not in your 20s, make sure you visit the program and/or find out some specific age demographics before you go to make sure it’s a good fit.

The decline and fall.

A pretty rough review of John Irving’s latest novel from Michiko Kakutani. One of several harsh book reviews I’ve read recently. This one follows the nearly complete evisceration of Richard Powers’ entire body of work in the New Yorker. I’m not against negative reviews…it’s just, well, it’s always unsettling to read a harsh one, particularly when it’s the work of an established writer.

Scrivener, the helpful writing software, is offering a discount to NaNoWriMo participants. The more you write, the cheaper it gets! I don’t use Scrivener all the time, but I absolutely love it for organizing lots of shorter documents, or trying to get my head around a big project. I’m a big fan of the cork board.

This has made the rounds but it’s an amazing story of almost giving up on writing (but not!) and so I include it here.

*There’s a nice little feed of what I’ve been bookmarking on de.lic.ious on the right side of the blog  that you can see if you click through from that handy feed reader you use to keep up with all the bloggy goodness out there. But if you’re in a hurry or just don’t feel like clicking, I’m here for you. Thus the October roundup.

Daily papers walking the plank

There’s an eye-opening column on Business Week’s web site that suggests that a major American city’s daily paper is due to close, from a business perspective, in the next 18-24 months. Guess which one’s at the top of the list?

Big hint: Top stories have recently included several (front-page) cheers on the awesomeness of “Ratatouille”, a story that liberally quotes a fake newspaper and, ahem, why women like uncircumcised men.

What’s even more eye-opening than the column are the comments below it, which range from, basically, “American newspapers are useless, the Internet is better,” to “the SF Chronicle is a left-wing propaganda machine that doesn’t report news, the Internet is better.”

Reading to travel, traveling to read

I had trouble waking up this morning, and even after my usual mug of Peet’s French Roast, I’m still not quite awake. I’ve been web surfing before I buckle down on my freelance projects, hoping that procrastination will lead to perkiness…. one of my cyber-stops? Slate.

A series on Slate that I’ve been reading all week has reminded me that I love to read travel writing. It’s been a while since I read any with real enthusiasm; I think writing a travel memoir last year sapped my interest temporarily. But travel writing used to be the kind of nonfiction writing I devoured more than any other, and aside from fiction, the kind of writing I devoured more than any other. I had to restrain myself yesterday in posting some of my favorite nonfiction books — I could easily have made the whole list from travel writing. In fact, it’s not necessarily the travel that I enjoy so much as the idea of place. I like when place is a character in a book, whether it’s travel writing or memoir or fiction. I think I’m just susceptible to location and landscape, and my own writing, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, tends to have a heavy focus on such things.

Anyway, Slate has been running a series in their “Dispatches” section written by three guys cycling through Central Asia. It’s compelling stuff; chance meetings, danger, strange stories, bike woes. Check it out.

Gay Talese memoir

Gay Talese, one of the writers at the forefront of the “new journalism” of the 1960s, has finally finished his memoir, A Writer’s Life, after 14 years. There’s an article in today’s New York Times about Talese and his quirky, often extreme writing habits. He is apparently incredibly meticulous and a notorious tinkerer. (Hey, my kind of writer.) He has, according to the article, compared writing to “driving a truck at night without headlights, losing your way along the road and spending a decade in a ditch,” which is perhaps the funniest, but also most depressing way of considering the craft that I think I’ve ever heard.

on journalism (from the creative vantage point)

An excerpt from “The Art of Creative Nonfiction,” by Lee Gutkind, that will surely amuse my former co-workers, (as it amused me):

“Traditional journalists learn early in their education that creativity or imagination in newspapers and magazines are basically disallowed. Reporters with any real literary talent will have it squeezed out of them by stubborn and insensitive editors. Disillusioned, they will write secretly at night (becoming closet poets or novelists), or they leave the profession to chase their muse or some other dream. � What the reporter/writer feels or thinks personally about the nature or truth of the story is irrelevant. Curiously, most everyone in the newspaper business will admit that objectivity is impossible, but that doesn’t seem to diminish the intensity of their belief in the principle.”

I should mention that I am finding, from some students and professors, (and now from this book) a sort of sweeping disdain toward “journalism,” despite the fact that many of these same professors publish frequently in well-known magazines (apparently not considered journalism?) and that many of these same students presumably wish they were published in well-known magazines, or even newspapers, for that matter. In my fiction class today, one student, by way of introducing himself, declared that he was a failed journalism major and that he “hated writing to the lowest common denominator.”

Fair enough, I guess, but I am fairly certain that this guy never actually worked at a newspaper or magazine.
So far, I’m finding this attitude more interesting than abrasive or annoying. Sometimes, like in the above passage, I even find it amusing.

“unspeakable vileness”

A quote from Balzac that sums up last week at work:

“Anybody who was once caught up in journalism, or is caught up in it still, is under the cruel necessity of greeting men he despises, smiling at his worst enemy, condoning actions of the most unspeakable vileness, soiling his hands to pay his agressors out in their own coin. You grow used to seeing evil done, to letting it go; you begin by not minding, you end by doing it yourself. In the end, your soul, spotted daily by shameful transactions always going on, shrinks, the spring of noble thoughts rusts, the hinges of small talk wear loose and swing unaided. The Alcestes become Philintes, character loses temper, talent degenerates, the belief in works of beauty evaporates. A man who wanted to take pride in his pages spends himself in wretched articles which sooner or later his conscience will tell him were base actions.”

From Balzac, “A Harlot High and Low”

New Voices

I’ve written little here recently, or, well, since March. That’s the result of a week-long trip to Japan, a parental visit, a mad dash to write a travel article for an Egyptian travel magazine, and, after all that, some general lethargy. That’s likely the result of some grey weather here in SF and my usual moodiness.

But this weekend that abated, and the sun’s shining warmly, even in the Sunset.
I’ve just finished reading an anthology of short stories, Best New American Voices 2003. It was stellar. Even now, the some of the stories stick with me. Work like that has the double impact of inspiring me and discouraging me…because the stories were so damn good.

Today I got caught up in reading about the mistakes, bad judgment and downward spiral of a New York Times reporter, Jayson Blair. The NYT published a whopping 4 pages worth of investigation/corrections on this guy. Unbelievable. I expected, after reading all of that, to feel better about the New York Times and a major journalistic slip-up, but I felt much worse. The article made it seem as though there’s a large contingent of editors there, none of whom communicate. The article left me wondering how any of what happened with Blair could possibly have happened.

Norman Solomon

I read an article today on E&P online describing one columnist’s view that the media can’t publish/air anti-war views out of fear of alienating their readers. In contrast, he said, British newspapers are going whole-hog with the anti-war writing. Granted, more of the population of Britain is  against the war than is the case here. But I think this guy has a point. So, I read a few of his columns. He’s a little biting for my style, but his point is well taken:
Norman Solomon